Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
honduran_police is a road accident event	1116	12-sep-2018	92.3
beautiful_silver is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
party_democracy is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
evening_sun is a location	1114	25-aug-2018	99.0
damp_paper_towel is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
predators is an animal that preys on spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
red_wings is an organization also known as blackhawks	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
jonathan_finer is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
jeep makes the automobile jeep_cherokee	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
clark is an athlete who injured his/her arms	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0